Organs Made from Scratch

Growing living tissue and organs in the lab would be a life-saving trick. But replicating the complexity of an organ, by growing different types of cells in precisely the right arrangement—muscle held together with connective tissue and threaded with blood vessels, for example—is currently impossible. Researchers at MIT have taken a step toward this goal by coming up with a way to make "building blocks" containing different kinds of tissue that can be put together.